I’m not an insane coupon clipper, but I use coupons AT LEAST once a week. It’s one of those things where you suddenly realize your twenty-somethings are almost over and thirty is getting ready to smack you in the face.

The only thing I can think of is the poor cashiers! Did you see their eyes when they took those stacks of coupons? Comical stuff man, comical stuff. I use the self-checkout line in most stores. Last week, at Winn-Dixie, I used like seven coupons and was still kinda mortified that the cheapskate light would start flashing. As it was, I’d saved over $3.00 (woo hoo) and I had to get “live” assistance approval because clipped coupons equaled over 10% of the total price – it was like 30%. I’d hate to have seen what would have happened if SHE’d gone through there, lol.

Even Newmans Own,which give 100% of it’s post tax profits to charity, charges more than cost for it’s product. they have to make more than the cost of the product to make enough money to pay all the people who made the product,. and they will charge as much as people are willing to pay. It’s that simple like it or not.

Have you ever made something homemade and then tried to sell it. If you only charge for the cost of materials, the you have lost the value of your time. If you only charge for materials and the time you made it, then you don’t get the value of having the idea to make it, and the care put into making it, and the effort put into telling people and convincing them to buy the product and the convenience that the person buying it doensnt’ have to make all that effort. Markup, and hence profit, covers all the nontangible values of a product. But if you are willing to sell your product for only cost then let me know when you start your business, cause I wanna see how long you last by giving away your time and effort for free. Oh wait that’s called charity. Most for profit business are into charity, and I thinks that where your complaint lies.
Again, I understand you feelings on it not being fair but the only places I’ve heard of where things cost equal value for everyone or either socialistic or communistic societies, and they seem to be unpopular these days, unfortunately.

Enough stores refusing to buy because consumers refuse to pay, tells the manufacturer that their price is too high ( or the product stinks!) and they either lower the price price for the store, who can pass it along as a sale, or offer incentives (coupons) to entice users now who might later be willing to pay full price, or redo their marketing to make the product seem as valuable as the price. Loss Leaders (products on sale, coupon items, samples) are products not counted toward profit making. they are part of Marketing. Marketing’s purpose is to get you to pay the maximum price.

And it is not possible for every single shopper to use a coupon for every item, because Manufacturers do NOT print a unique coupon for every item they make. Coupons, like gold, is only valuable because they are limited( in number and by expiration), and the manufacturer who prints them agrees to accept them instead of money for the individuals who have them.

By your logic, Pat, no one should ever accept samples from the manufacturer because everyone else pays for you to have that sample, NO, the manufacturer expects no to profit from the sample in hopes that it profits from your later purchases.

If nobody used coupons, the price would not go down.
but if nobody buys the product at full suggested retail price then the price is too high, and the price must come down, else they make no profit at all. Cost+200% mark up get’s you a profit of zero dollars if you cannot even sell the product. Cost+200% minus 55 cents is likely much more than zero.

If you want to look out for the whole, then stop buying things that you cannot afford at prices that you consider too high.

Having had to place orders with manufactures, negotiate prices, set the Markup on the products, observe how much we sold, accepting coupons, and planning sales based on customers purchases and manufacturer discounts, and regularly speaking with manufacturers’ representatives about why we were/weren’t going to restock and how they offered incentives to us to continue to buy and sell their products, I learned these facts.